One Year Today

One year ago today I left my husband. I left with some boxes & stayed with a girlfriend. I wept & wept. Should I go? Should I stay? Am I crazy? Is it so bad? Am I imagining all of this? My N is a very successful, well-employed and respected man. Always polite & refined in public, nice looking and presentable. We owned a house together. We had a life together. And there was family, but we had no children.

At that time I was suffering panic & anxiety attacks whenever anything untoward happened at work. At home, I was on constant alert. Everything I did was out of fear, no other reason--fear was my predominant emotion. My hands were shaking with tremors almost all the time. Sometimes at work people noticed my hands shaking when observing me write. I lost a lot of weight. And, I wept everyday.

I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing a year ago today. If my N had made any real effort to hoover me, I might have gone back. But, the first week I left, I saw him. He was ENRAGED but in that smoldering way they have with all the verbal abuse: YOU blah, blah. And, I saw in his EVIL EYE the HATRED & the MALICE towards me. I saw him unmasked. I knew. That encounter finished me with him. Not to say that I did not have moments longing for the illusion of a relationship with a husband in our home. Also, I had my mother who spoke to me everyday on the phone. She pushed me to divorce him immediately, no cooling down, no attempt at reconciliation. (I think she was afraid he'd really batter me, or kill me.)

I was lucky. He found a new woman fairly immediately (but this was & remains a 'secret' from me). She moved into the house within 4 months of my leaving. His parents came from Europe for 6 weeks and left just before she moved in. So, although he was a nasty SOB in the divorce & needled me at every opportunity, really my N was far away. No hoovering, no phone calls, no texts--just upsetting e-mails but only on a weekly, or bi-monthly basis. He broke my possessions & stole from me. If I had any doubts when I left him . . . this last year has confirmed all my suspicions about him.

Within one week of leaving him, the feelings of my own craziness evaporated. The tremors in my hands stopped after a month. A year later, I do suffer from some PTSD symptoms. But, leaving this man was the wisest thing I ever did. No contact is the only way. Since I left, I have learned so much more about him. I am flabergasted! And, I am sure there are so many more lies & deceptions I have no idea about. I see now the whole thing (not relationship) was a lie. I was nothing to him but a useful object to extract money & sex, as well as, to provide a maid & secretarial services.

I was divorced on April 9. The thing is done. I am still living in a rented room. Trying to put my life back together again. I spent last summer & fall reading everything about Cluster-B personality disorders (borderlines, narcissists & psychopaths). Talking to my girlfriends & my mother. Learning about other women's stories on this site & others. Avoiding toxic people & situations. No dating. I am so, so, so much better. I shudder to think that I could still be there. And, I could still be there but for the fact that I was one of the lucky ones. The stars aligned & I was able to leave.

The financial & emotional cost was very high. My N was financially enriched my his marriage to me--almost every penny I earned for 2 1/2 years was left in the house which he got. Emotionally, I have lost my trust & faith in the essential goodness of mankind. I have been so disillusioned. A loss of innocence. And, the pain . . . the emotional cost of being caught in the web of a malignant narcissist is unfathomable. But, these men will drain one dry. I just cut my losses. My only regret was the waste of 3 years or my life in my late 40's with him. I have never regretted leaving him.